siVUKA! Education Indaba in Philippi

Freshly Ground will play at siVUKA!, an Education Indaba, to be held in Philippi in the Western Cape on November 26, 2011.

The event will be opened by Archbishop Desmond Tutu with an inspiring talk on the “Value of Education”, and a number of well-known educational ambassadors will address the audience.

Entitled siVUKA!, which means ‘we wake up’, the indaba is intended to promote educational awareness among young people in the townships of the Western Cape and to encourage them to actively engage in furthering their studies.

The event is organised by The South African German Centre for Development Research and Criminal Justice (SAGER CDRCJ) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and The Anton Lubowski Educational Trust (ALET).

Around 2000 people are expected to attend siVUKA!, which will be held from 11H30 until 17H00 at The Business Place, Philippi, an exciting, adequate and uniquely-Philippi venue.

Background information on the event

The event will consist of four pillars, namely:

A Science Slam

A form of academic communication (originating from Germany) where well known researchers of the University of the Western Cape, the SAGER CDRCJ and its German collaboration partners present their research in the field of “Innovation for Development” in a highly accessible and entertaining way and compete for the title of “The Most Inspiring siVUKA! 2011 Researcher” to be crowned by the audience.

An Educational Jamboree

A “One-Stop-Shop” Educational Fair for further and higher education, where higher education institutions and scholarship organisations provide the audience with detailed information on available study and funding opportunities, career advise, and assist them with application and registration processes.

Educational Keynote Speeches

An Entertainment Programme & Freshly Ground Benefit Concert:Freshly Ground is known for its social activism and passion for education, and has agreed to perform on a pro bono basis. The popular Afro-fusion band will be supported by local musicians and bands from the local Philippi community.

The name siVUKA! was chosen to reflect what the organisers hope will be an awakening of their target groups to the idea of better lives through education, and to a vision of communities working together to unleash their budding potential.

In particular, the event aims to:

• interest and engage scholars, parents and communities in the education of their children.

• provide a platform for scholars and parents to connect directly with, and have face-to-face interaction with educational institutions, enabling scholars and parents to access reliable information on study requirements, available study programmes and application processes, thereby motivating and enabling effective actions to be taken to improve educational achievement.

• Motivate and inspire the youth of local communities to partake in their own educational

development and in turn partake in their personal future in South Africa – being inspired by leaders to become leaders.

• enhance the image and pride of the local community by bringing world-classentertainment to Philippi

• facilitate social interactions between residents of Philippi and surrounding township areas, as well as between these two groups and residents of the greater Cape Town area.

• enable the students of the South African German Centre for Development Research and Criminal Justice to gain first hand practical experiences in organising and managing community outreach projects.

Nadia Lubowski, founding member and director of Anton Lubowski Educational Trust, comments, “By reaching out to township youth (primarily Grades 10 -12 scholars and undergraduate students) and to the wider communities to which they belong, spreading educational awareness and inspiring and motivating young people and their carers alike, we believe that siVUKA! is highly relevant to addressing and tackling pressing educational obstacles.”

Iris Vernekohl, DAAD lecturer at the SAGER CDRCJ and organiser of the event, adds: “By actively engaging our students in the organisation of the siVUKA! event, it enables them to take leadership initiative by reaching out to and working with the local communities, and to jointly contribute to building a learning culture that enables individuals to lift themselves out of poverty.”

“As an engaged university, community development in the form of the siVUKA! event is at the core of our vision: From hope to action through knowledge”, says Prof. Brian O´Connell, Rector and Vice- Chancellor of the UWC.

Ticket sales will be open to local high school students, to students from all universities and various other tertiary educational institutions in the Western Cape, as well as to members of the general public, who will be encouraged to visit the township and to support and participate in this and future events. It is hoped that this engagement with outside communities will see the beginnings of increased collaboration and capacity-building in traditionally isolated Philippi and surrounding township areas.”

Tickets are available through schools and community members in Philippi and through the cashiers at the UWC administration building at a cost of ZAR 40 to people living in the immediate community and students, and for ZAR 120 per ticket to the general public through Computicket.

For further information, please contact

The Anton Lubowski Educational Trust:

Nadia Lubowski on 082 923 9815

The South African German Centre for Development Research and Criminal Justice:

Iris Vernekohl 079 560 2048

The University of the Western Cape:

Luthando Tyhalibongo

Why Philippi?

For nearly fifty years, successive apartheid governments withheld resources from and promulgated inferior standards in township schools. Democratic South Africa has struggled to reverse this trend. Children in township schools are confronted with the legacy of decades of neglect, not only of their schools but also of their immediate environment, with debilitating social pressures, disillusionment and a lack of self-belief contributing to worryingly low performance rates or, even worse, unacceptably high school drop-out rates.

With South African labour demand becoming increasingly biased in favour of highly skilled workers, the long-term consequences of not receiving an adequate level of education (such as, amongst others, unemployment, low earning potential, poverty and/or resorting to crime) are dire. Changing negative perceptions of education in townships and motivating young people to excel at school, in order to go to vocational colleges or universities is therefore imperative from a societal and developmental perspective.

Philippi is an impoverished township in Cape Town with a population of around 150 000 people. Average household incomes are very low, and only around half of Philippi’s households have electricity, flush toilets and sewerage. High rates of alcohol and drug abuse contribute to spiralling crime and violence, as well as to the prevalence and power of street gangs. These social pressures, combined with under- resourced schools and low-quality education, contribute to Philippi’s dismal educational record – around 30% of children do not attend primary school, and of those who do attend, very few make it to Grade 10, let alone matric. These factors, in turn, have led to a situation where youth unemployment in Philippi has been estimated at 50%.

These conditions are typical of surrounding township areas, such as Guguletu and Lentegeur, where young people face the same obstacles to educational and personal development – obstacles which often seem insurmountable to them.

The Anton Lubowski Educational Trust

The Anton Lubowski Education Trust was established to further the ideals of the late Anton Lubowski, respected Namibian Advocate and freedom fighter, assassinated on September 12, 1989, as he entered the front gate of his home in Windhoek just one week before Namibia gained political independence from South Africa. Lubowski’s killers have never been brought to justice.

Anton Lubowski’s exceptional leadership qualities enabled him to stand up for an unjust system against all odds and resulted in him giving his life in his fight against social injustice. Lubowski strongly believed that education is an important tool to transform a country and, born of a desire to make some sense out of the senselessness of his death and a profound conviction that the only way to achieve social change is through education. In 2007, 18 years after the loss of their husband and father, Gabrielle and Nadia

Lubowski and other family members founded the Anton Lubowski Educational Trust (ALET), a registered Non-Proﬁt Organisation in Cape Town, of which Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been the patron since 2008.

The South African German Centre for Development Research and Criminal Justice

The South African German Centre for Development Research and Criminal Justice (SAGEDRCJ) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) is one out of only five African Excellence Centres in Africa and is the only one in South Africa. It is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) as part of the Aktion Afrika Initiative of the German Foreign Office.

The Centre is a joint collaboration between the Institute for Development Research and Policy at the Ruhr University Bochum (Germany), the Humboldt University Berlin (Germany) as well as the School of Government and the Institute for Social Development at the University of the Western Cape. It works closely together with the other four African Excellence Centres on the African continent, which are situated in Ghana (Development & Health), Congo (Microfinance), Tanzania (Law), and Namibia (Logistics).

The Centre is composed of two divisions, the Development Research Division and the Criminal Justice Division, and provides high-quality and state-of the-art academic training at post-graduate (masters and PhD ) level and conducts innovative research in the fields of development studies, public policy analysis and management as well as criminal justice. Set out to train future African leaders, it actively supports a multitude of community outreach initiatives of its staff and students by providing various sorts of practical project management and leadership training components.